The Sept. 11 Canon: Week 1
The Cause of the Mess We're in Now: People Who Just Didn't Get It
From: Judith Shulevitz
To: Geraldine Brooks, Christopher Caldwell, Chris Suellentrop, and Ted Widmer Posted Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2001, at 5:21 PM ET
Who are these people?
This week's reading.
You're right, Geraldine—I should have made it clear that we always retained the right to do defensive research even though we didn't do any. How come? As you say, because there was more money for defense contractors in hardware. But why was that the case? Because once we de-funded it, we forgot about it. There was no one left to get upset about it, no bureaucracy left to advance its cause. Shortsighted, maybe, but inevitable. You can't just blame the CIA or the Pentagon. If you as a nation want something done, you put money in it. You want to relegate it to oblivion, you take the money away. If the American people had had a clear sense of the danger they were in, there would have been plenty of money for vaccines and all the rest. But, of course, if we'd been properly alarmed, we would never have de-funded the whole deal to begin with. I blame the '60s for creating this crazy, self-hating atmosphere in which Americans convinced themselves that they were the world's biggest threat and all they had to do is disarm and everyone else would, too. As Bart Simpson would say, "Wrong!"
Look, I'm just going from the book here. M., E., and B. haven't given us any portraits of Pentagon or CIA machiavels deliberately suppressing information about the dangers of germ warfare while stuffing payola in their back pockets. Their story is about people who really didn't get it—liberal scientists who refused to believe that the bad guys could possibly be as bad as those dirty CIA spies say they are or hard-line military folk stuck by inside old-fashioned models of combat and unable to grasp how completely the possibility of germ warfare had changed the terms of everything. The right screwed us as much as the left did, simply by being unable to comprehend the hugeness of the problem.
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As for whether our grand idealistic gesture somehow made it harder for other nations to use germ warfare, I'd love to see you make that case—what's the evidence? If you're right, it would make me feel a whole lot better about having shot ourselves in the foot.
The Cause of the Mess We're in Now: People Who Just Didn't Get It
From: Judith Shulevitz
To: Geraldine Brooks, Christopher Caldwell, Chris Suellentrop, and Ted Widmer Posted Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2001, at 5:21 PM ETNotes From The Fray Editor:
Jamal Thalji calls for books by Arabic authors. ADAS says that "the charge of excessive attention to 'politics' is thrown at all established religions…[and] is, of course, usually true…To say that Islam's success is knotted to its politics is just to say that it was successful." BML looks at Islamic history here, while Uno Who is reading Tom Clancy, and wondering who else is.
Comments:
Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult, tried to use biological agents in a terror attack in some of Japan's most densely populated cities. The cult's membership included technicians and other people with graduate-school-level training in biochemistry, biology, etc. They were nonetheless unable to deliver their weapons, so they opted instead for sarin gas (which they also basically botched).
While I do believe that some of the biowar doomsday scenarios are plausible and worth taking extreme measures to guard against, I also think that it is perhaps more difficult to deliver these weapons than is popularly portrayed. During World War I, one of the earliest uses of chemical weapons backfired heavily when the wind shifted and the chlorine gas blew back toward the Germans.
Finally, I think that a suicide "bio-bomber" may be less of a threat than a hijacker for psychological and religious reasons. Dying in an instant of fire is a much more "religiously" appealing way to go. Dying slowly of a self-induced plague doesn't seem quite so, well, glamorous, and probably not as impressive to God.
--Ananda Gupta
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
The U.S. abandoned its biological warfare program because of its difficulty in use as a controllable weapons system and as a public relations exercise to improve the U.S.'s image during the Vietnam War. Nixon said at the time that he was unconcerned about the U.S. not having such weapons systems since they would nuke anyone that used such weapons against the U.S. During the Gulf War the U.S. government warned Iraq that it would retaliate massively (the implication being the use of nuclear weapons) if the Iraqis used chemical or biological weapons.
The tragedy of U.S. policy is that they have spent a tremendous amount of money on weapons systems for wars which it will probably never fight, but did so little to protect Americans from much more likely terrorist scenarios including biological terrorism. There are many clever, sophisticated, well-funded and ruthless people in the world who can and will develop the technology to use these weapons. New Missile Defense is a complete waste of money since it is beyond belief that any government will ever launch these weapons against the U.S., but horrific bio-terrorism is almost a certainty in the future.
--Martin Kannengieser
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
(11/8)
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Notes From The Fray Editor:
Jamal Thalji calls for books by Arabic authors. ADAS says that "the charge of excessive attention to 'politics' is thrown at all established religions…[and] is, of course, usually true…To say that Islam's success is knotted to its politics is just to say that it was successful." BML looks at Islamic history here, while Uno Who is reading Tom Clancy, and wondering who else is.
Comments:
Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult, tried to use biological agents in a terror attack in some of Japan's most densely populated cities. The cult's membership included technicians and other people with graduate-school-level training in biochemistry, biology, etc. They were nonetheless unable to deliver their weapons, so they opted instead for sarin gas (which they also basically botched).
While I do believe that some of the biowar doomsday scenarios are plausible and worth taking extreme measures to guard against, I also think that it is perhaps more difficult to deliver these weapons than is popularly portrayed. During World War I, one of the earliest uses of chemical weapons backfired heavily when the wind shifted and the chlorine gas blew back toward the Germans.
Finally, I think that a suicide "bio-bomber" may be less of a threat than a hijacker for psychological and religious reasons. Dying in an instant of fire is a much more "religiously" appealing way to go. Dying slowly of a self-induced plague doesn't seem quite so, well, glamorous, and probably not as impressive to God.
--Ananda Gupta
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
The U.S. abandoned its biological warfare program because of its difficulty in use as a controllable weapons system and as a public relations exercise to improve the U.S.'s image during the Vietnam War. Nixon said at the time that he was unconcerned about the U.S. not having such weapons systems since they would nuke anyone that used such weapons against the U.S. During the Gulf War the U.S. government warned Iraq that it would retaliate massively (the implication being the use of nuclear weapons) if the Iraqis used chemical or biological weapons.
The tragedy of U.S. policy is that they have spent a tremendous amount of money on weapons systems for wars which it will probably never fight, but did so little to protect Americans from much more likely terrorist scenarios including biological terrorism. There are many clever, sophisticated, well-funded and ruthless people in the world who can and will develop the technology to use these weapons. New Missile Defense is a complete waste of money since it is beyond belief that any government will ever launch these weapons against the U.S., but horrific bio-terrorism is almost a certainty in the future.
--Martin Kannengieser
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
(11/8)